Re: Toucam webcam or LPI or digital camera mount?

On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 11:22:56 -0000, "Chris S" <fred@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Hi
>
>Just getting into this, want to try and take better photo's of planets and
>stars than i can via holding my 2mp camera up to the eye piece!
>
>I see a lot of people use the Phillips Toucam webcam very well, i was
>wondering which would be a better option...
>
>a toucam (with adapter i guess) , how much are the adaptors for it?
>
>somethink like a meader lpi (on ebay for £50)
>
>or a £40 camera mount for my 2mp fuji digital camera or friends 5mp
>panasonic fz25 camera
>
>on my 2mp camera i can't do things like exposure or slow shutter settings
>etc.. as it's all automatic, can you adjust things like that on the webcams?
>
>my friends fz25 can do all of that, but i wont get my mitts on it that
>often!

I don't have any experience with the LPI but my camera of choice would
be the Toucam for the Moon and planets. Adapters are fairly
inexpensive at ~£15. If you want to get a bit more of the Moon in the
frame, look out for a focal reducer. Have a word with Bernard at
www.modernastronomy.com and he'll point you in the direction of the
Atik 0.5x focal reducer which sells for ~£29 IIRC. Bernard also sells
the webcam 1.25" eyepiece adapters I recall.

This may be stating the obvious, but a webcam will also require a
computer to drive it. Capture movies will also tend to be quite large
so a decent amount of hard drive space is recommended. I can happily
fill 4Gb of free space on my 'outside' laptop in a very short space of
time. Think ahead about file management as well. Options are:

Process on the computer that captured the files and then delete the
files. (Processing power a big benefit here).
Move the files to another machine for processing. This requires
getting the potenitally rather large movie files off the capture
station. Zipping them up will tend to reduce (especially planetary
captures) the movie files to a small fraction of their former size.
However, they can still be quite large and moving them still needs to
be thought about. A memory stick (512Mb or larger ideally) is a good
means to do this but you'll need to make sure the capture machine (and
the processing machine) as USB 2.0 compatible, otherwise be prepared
for a wait! Other options include burning the files to CD or DVD
and/or plugging in (USB 2.0) external hard drives.

An IR filter will improve things (as Robin has alreasy stated).

Stars and fainter objects like planetary moons will take longer
exposures. A Toucam Pro out of the box can't do this. Options here
include buying a modded one, modding one yourself or buying another
modded device like one of the ATIK range of webcams. If you're looking
to take photos of stars etc., you'll also need a good mount and an
accurate drive. Black and white cameras (some of the ATIKs are
monochrome) can be used with filters to generate colour shots.


--
Pete
http://www.digitalsky.org.uk
.

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